Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Slow Blogging Ahead

I don't expect to be updating the blog as much as usual for the next couple of weeks. We will be traveling to France. I will be giving several talks at conferences, and will be back in two weeks. The TTF elves will be watching the blog in the meantime.

12 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Tonight at 10 ET on CNN TV, "AC360º" examines a shocking "experimental therapy" designed to make feminine boys more masculine. See what one family says was the devastating result in a special report, "The Sissy Boy Experiment."

if Eric Cantor is so offensive calling for Weiner's resignation, what about the Dems?:

"WASHINGTON -- New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's prospects for political survival dimmed precipitously on Wednesday with the appearance on the Internet of an X-rated photo said to be of the congressman – and calls from fellow Democrats for him to step down.

"In light of Anthony Weiner's offensive behavior online, he should resign," Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a member of the party campaign committee's leadership, said in a statement that was quickly followed by similar expressions from other Democrats.

Separately, as the political scandal increasingly roiled the Democratic Party, several officials said that Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, was pregnant. An official at the State Department, where Abedin serves as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had no comment. Abedin was traveling with Clinton on an official trip to the Mideast and Africa.

Weiner, 46, has admitted sending explicit photos and messages via the Internet to about a half-dozen women over the past three years. He vowed at a news conference on Monday to remain in office, and one lawmaker who spoke to him on Wednesday said Weiner indicated he still hopes to ride out the furor and remain in Congress. That lawmaker spoke on condition of anonymity, saying it was a private conversation.

But the appearance of a photo of Weiner's genitals added yet another aspect to what appears to be a sex scandal without actual sex in the age of social media. According to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, Weiner sent the picture of himself to one of the women with whom he corresponded online."

Thanks, David, I am currently staying with some friends near Annecy, not far from Geneva. It is beautiful here, we just had a nice lunch of bread and pastries and cherries off his tree and of course delicious coffee. The first day is always the hardest when you go this direction!

In letters (http://media.jsonline.com/documents/Buckstaff.pdf) obtained by No Quarter, local Republican Party officials are encouraging their GOP colleagues to collect enough signatures to get a fake Democratic candidate on the ballot in each of two upcoming recall elections.

The spoiler Democrats, who are identified by name in the letters, would run in the Democratic primaries for the seats now held by Republican Sens. Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac and Luther Olsen of Ripon.

Both of the fake Democrats have a history of giving almost exclusively to major Republicans.

"We need to make sure Democrat challengers face primaries to allow our Republicans time to mount a campaign," Dan Feyen, chairman of the 6th Congressional District Republican Party, wrote in the letter to "fellow conservatives" on Friday.

"A Democratic primary," Feyen continued, "will push the general election back by one month, so that Senator Hopper can have more time to organize a campaign against his liberal challenger."

That's verbatim what is in the other two-page letter encouraging support for the second fake Democratic candidate, except that note substitutes Olsen's name for Hopper's.

By running these fake Democrats, Republicans would force the Democratic challengers to spend money on a primary that could have been used in the general election. Plus, the spoiler candidates could launch negative attacks on the Democrats while the Republican incumbents remain above the fray.

Feyen confirmed that he sent his letter trying to get a "protest candidate" on the ballot in the Hopper race.

What's more, he said there's a good explanation for why his letter and the one written by local Republican officials in Olsen's district were virtually the same.

"It's something being coordinated by the RPW," he said, referring to the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Officials with the state party could not be reached for comment.

Local GOP officials in La Crosse were also secretly recorded on May 25 discussing getting a spoiler Democratic candidate in the recall election tentatively scheduled for Republican Sen. Dan Kapanke of La Crosse. During that discussion, La Crosse County Republican officials mention Mark Jefferson, the former head of the state GOP , and Kapanke's campaign manager .

Kapanke's campaign has denied any involvement in the matter. Jefferson, who stepped down to take a job with the national party last week, has not commented.

In an interview Sunday, Hopper said he also had no involvement in the attempt to get a fake Democrat on the ballot in his race.

"I have absolutely zero to do with it," said the first-term Republican.

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said on Thursday.

The former first lady and onetime political rival to President Barack Obama quickly became one of the most influential members of his cabinet after she began her tenure at State in early 2009.

"Hillary Clinton wants the job,'' said one source who knows the secretary well.

A second source also said Clinton wants the position.

A third source said Obama has already expressed support for the change in her role. It is unclear whether Obama has formally agreed to nominate her for the post, which would require approval by the 187 member countries of the World Bank."

“Since you’re all seeing the Reuters piece, let me address this as definitively as I can, on the record: the story is completely untrue,” Philippe Reines wrote in an email released to reporters at 5:50 p.m. in Washington – 1:50 a.m. in the United Arab Emirates, where he is traveling with Mrs. Clinton on a diplomatic mission.

Mr. Reines went on to state:

“Secretary Clinton has not had any conversations with the President, the White House or anyone about moving to the World Bank

“ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — As she shuttled to hotel conference rooms in her latest diplomatic swing through the Middle East, Hillary Rodham Clinton was barraged with questions Thursday about the fate of one prominent leader after another. When would Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi step down, reporters wanted to know. And what about the embattled Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh? Or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad?

As the day ended, the questions turned personal. What comes next for America’s globetrotting, highly popular secretary of state?

The queries were prompted by a Reuters news story that quoted unnamed sources as saying that Clinton was considering a job as World Bank president. Clinton’s deputies quickly denied the story, yet it persisted for hours, triggering innumerable tweets and breaking-news alerts on cable networks.

The story seemed plausible: Clinton has publicly said that she won’t serve as secretary of state after 2012 and that she has no plans to run again for the White House. The World Bank post would offer Clinton a convenient platform for promoting favorite causes, such as education for women.

“Hillary Clinton wants the job,” Reuters quoted one source as saying. The wire service said Clinton had been in discussions with White House officials about leaving the State Department next year — conveniently, just as current World Bank President Robert Zoellick would be ending his term.

In Abu Dhabi, exhausted aides watched the reports roll in with growing incredulity. The story had been firmly denied, yet it continued to spread. BlackBerrys buzzed with queries from reporters from around the world. The same questions were asked, and then asked again. Are you sure it’s not true?

Finally, just before 2 a.m. Friday, Abu Dhabi time, Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime aide and deputy assistant secretary of state, sat down to tap out the most sweeping denial he could muster:

“Let me address this as definitively as I can, on the record,” he wrote. “The story is completely untrue. To be crystal clear...

• Secretary Clinton has not had any conversations with the President, the White House or anyone about moving to the World Bank.

• She has expressed absolutely no interest in the job.

• She would not take it if offered.

With all due respect to my friends at Reuters, the story is bogus,” he concluded.

From the White House came more denials. The story is completely untrue,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. At the World Bank, officials noted that it was not yet clear that there would even be a vacancy at the top spot. Zoellick, a former Bush administration diplomat, has not publicly said whether he wants to continue in the job. At a press conference in Norway on Wednesday, he said the issue of his successor “is a decision for shareholders.”

Clinton did not publicly comment on the matter, and aides said she had retired for the evening to rest up for a four-day, three-nation trip through sub-Saharan Africa. At each stop, without a doubt, local reporters will press her on her plans. Typically, Clinton has responded to such personal questions with a touch of bemusement, giving few specific answers as she seeks to redirect the conversation to the diplomatic topic of the day.

The one person who knows her plans best has identified only a single goal that she holds as paramount for her post-diplomacy years.

“I would like to have a happy wife, and she won’t be unless she’s a grandmother,” former president Bill Clinton told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, this year, reprising a line he has used several times. “It’s something she wants more than she wanted to be president.”

Somehow, the answer never quite seems to satisfy. A grandmother, yes. But what else does Hillary Rodham Clinton want to be?"

“There were two visions, two paths to victory, and Newt’s path and my understanding of the path to victory were different, and when that happens, then the candidate’s vision has got to prevail,” he added.

After nearly a dozen aides and staffers left Gingrich's campaign, he was also abandoned by former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who had been his national campaign co-chair. Perdue switched his support to another candidate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

"Tim Pawlenty is a great man, he was a phenomenal governor, and he is the person I now believe stands the greatest chance of defeating President Obama," Perdue said in a statement released by the Pawlenty campaign. The release noted that "until today, Gov. Perdue was Newt Gingrich's national campaign co-chair."

The colossal implosion pushed Gingrich's candidacy to the brink of collapse, though he maintained he will continue his campaign.

Less than an hour after news broke of the mass departure, Gingrich wrote on his Facebook wall, "I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring. The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.”